The last decade of the nineteenth century saw key turning points in a number of trends in American society. The frontier was seen as closing, ending the era of free land to the West. The two excluded peoples, Indigenous Americans and African-Americans, experienced a low point in their mistreatment. The Dawes Act (1887) and the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890) sought to eliminate American Indians as a separate and resistant people to American expansion. The Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) confirmed the legality of Jim Crow segregation (see Chapter Two). At the same time immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe poured into the United States, presenting a new ethnic and religious diversity that was seen as highly unwelcome by those who called themselves ‘native’ Americans; i.e., white Northern European Protestants.

From the 1870s there was rapid urbanization and industrialization. The railroads, electricity, motion pictures, cable cars and petroleum began to transform daily life. Huge fortunes were made by a few, while the vast majority labored long hours in oppressive conditions for just a few dimes an hour. A few hundred men held fortunes of over $1 million, while more than 80 per cent of the U.S. working population made less than $500 a year. Farmers saw a sharp decline in commodity prices, while the high prices charged by railroads and food corporations left them in chronic debt.